Some Murders Do Have Em
In addition to his celebrated literary novels, John Banville has carved out a parallel career as a crime writer of some distinction, writing under the pen name Benjamin Black. He talks to Paul Nolan about the latest book in the Black series, the compelling A Death In Summer.
Paul Nolan, 26 Jul 2011
The new novel in John Banville’s superb series of Benjamin Black crime novels, A Death In Summer, finds hard-bitten pathologist Doctor Quirke returning to investigate the suspicious death of newspaper magnate Richard “Diamond Dick” Jewell on his stud farm in County Kildare. Although an apparent suicide, Quirke quickly becomes convinced that Jewell has in fact been murdered, which is the cue for a compelling journey into the dark side of 50s high society in Dublin, taking in Jewell’s mysterious and attractive widow, Francoise d’Aubigny (with whom Quirke swiftly embarks on an affair), his disconcertingly self-contained nine-year old daughter, and the notorious orphanage St Christopher’s, where Quirke once resided.
I wonder if, as is the case with many of Banville’s justly celebrated literary novels (he was recently bestowed the prestigious Franz Kafka award for his body of work), real life events inspired the story of A Death In Summer.
“No, A Death In Summer certainly is all invented,” replies Banville, more quietly spoken and warmer than you might expect, over a glass of wine in the Drawing Room bar in the Merrion Hotel. “I worked in journalism for 35 years, so it’s quite nice to kill off a newspaper mogul. It’s not based on a specific event. It’s very hard to say where fiction comes from; there are all kinds of bits and scraps, and everyone in fiction is a Frankenstein’s monster with a screw in his neck. Luckily it’s on the page so nobody can see it. I wanted to do a book set in summer, because the others had been rather gloomy– not that this one is particularly cheerful! But somehow I got used to Quirke being in fog, cold, snow and rain – it seems to have always rained in the 1950s when I look back on it.
“Also with regard to real details, Quirke’s flat in Upper Mount Street is based on the one my aunt used to live in. I came to Dublin to work in Aer Lingus when I was 18 I guess, and I shared the flat with my aunt, who tragically died after a couple of years. Since she had a 99-year lease I took the flat, which you could barely live in, it was falling to pieces. But it was magnificent, my living room was about the size of this room and the bedroom was about the same size. You can imagine what that was like in the winter, with this tiny coal fire. So I’ve given Quirke a more upscale version of that.
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